Supreme Court Rules That Companies Can Require Workers to Accept Individual Arbitration

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday decreed that businesses can prohibit their workers from banding together to complain about pay and workplace conditions, reports the Washington Post . The justices ruled 5-4 Monday, with the court's conservative members in the majority, that businesses can force employees to individually use arbitration to resolve disputes. Approximately 25 million employees work under contracts that prohibit collective action by employees who want to raise claims about some aspect of their employment. The White House backed the businesses, reversing the Obama administration's position that was in favor of employees. The Supreme Court was tasked with reconciling federal laws that seemed to point in different directions. On the one hand, New Deal labor laws explicitly gave workers the right to band together. On the other, the older Federal Arbitration Act encourages the use of arbitration instead of the courts.